


Dying in your arms

by RosemaryPostlethwaite



Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 20:35:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20606918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosemaryPostlethwaite/pseuds/RosemaryPostlethwaite
Summary: alternative ending to "Libertines", Sam and Ruth go home together.





	Dying in your arms

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally the first fic I've ever done and/or posted and I am very nervous about it.

“C’mon, Ruth,” he urged. “Get in in the car.” His voice was rough with desperation.

She hesitated. He could see her hesitating, could see every emotion playing out on her so expressive face. She could have no idea how well he could read her--how little she really could hide from him. He was sure she was going to leave, going to turn away from him, but at the final moment she gave a little sigh, her anger and self-righteousness deflating into a wordless acceptance. 

She let him guide her into the back of the car, stiff and unfocused. He hovered around her, his arm at her back, his hand almost touching her waist. His whole body was rigid, tense, knowing the wrong move now might lose her to him forever. He touched her back, lightly, before moving away again, instructing the driver and settling in next to Ruth, near, yet not too near. Wary. Immeasurably heartened when she slid along the enormous leather bucket seat, snuggling closer to him. He put a cautious arm around her shoulders, and she melted, sobbing into his chest, her hands clutching at his body.

It was so hard, her pain. He held her, stroked her dark curls, her shoulder, her back. Wherever he could reach. As if he could comfort her, as if he could ease those years of disappointment. He had wanted to fix things for her. The part. Justine’s screenplay. He had wanted to let it fix her, save her as it had saved him. Bring her along on Justine’s shiny path of excitement and confidence and youth. 

He had only ruined things more. 

Finally, the sobbing abated. Ruth turned, awkward in his arms. “I’m sorry,” she choked out. 

“Jesus, Ruth,” he barked, too aware of his own weakness. How greatly he had failed her. 

“I wish,” she started in a small voice. “I mean, you—it was the right thing, telling me. But oh I wish you hadn’t told me!” She started sobbing again, and he felt again this intense rush of thankfulness that she didn’t turn from him as she did, that she buried herself in his arms, let him stroke her, comfort her. 

Soon, she lifted her head, soggy with tears. He wished he had a tissue – had he ever been the guy who wished he had a tissue before? He couldn’t remember. Probably not. 

“Sam?” came the small sound. “Have I—have I ruined everything again? It’s just, you said that – that I – and now all I can think of is that when I wanted tonight to be—you know—to be about you. About us?” It came out small and tentative, her voice pitchy and thin. Sam felt a rush of warmth at her words and gripped her more tightly. He knew how much they had cost her—knew anyway, how much it had cost him to say those things to her, all those months ago, in the ring, in the hot tub. 

Well, he’d said it better. His Ruth still wasn’t going to give up her feelings, not that easily. But she was here, in the back of this car, with him. In his arms, her tears soaking into his polo shirt. That was something. Everything, maybe. He tightened his arm around her in reassurance, placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head. 

They rode in silence the rest of the way, but it was an easier silence. Some tension had been lifted and Sam allowed himself to breathe, just a little. To put his face by the top of her head, breath in the scent of her hair. To hope. 

She tensed again when they reached his duplex, as he fumbled with a lock that seemed newly foreign, keys slipping out of fingers thick with need and hope and fear. He watched her, wary as she walked stiffly into his home, staring at his crappy sofa as if she’d forgotten what to do with it. 

“Sit, Christ Ruth, sit down.” She obeyed, perching on the edge like a maiden about to be devoured. He felt the wariness in her and sighed. Moving to the kitchen, he rummaged in cupboards, finding an old bottle of wine, a wineglass. Sloshed too much in with shaking hands. 

When he turned back, she was still on the sofa, staring at the wall. Still tense, still sitting knees together back straight like an obedient schoolgirl. Hmm. Maybe best not to let his thoughts turn in that direction, not just now. He gave her the wineglass instead and she drank deeply, blindly, not even noticing his own empty hands. He stood awkwardly next to her, wanting to sit by her, afraid of being rebuffed. He settled for the armchair. It was the right move, as he felt her tension ebb as he settled in. Felt his own relief as she drank wine and settled, ever so slightly back into the couch. 

As she drank, and retreated from him in her own thoughts, he looked around the room, trying to see it with her eyes. God. What a depressing exercise. Faded, peeling wallpaper, yellowed with nicotine. Sagging, broken-down sofa, battered table, furniture dragged out from the garbage heap of his first marriage. The burns in the carpet under the tired coffee table, from all the times he’d passed out, cigarette in hand, sodden with too much whisky or glazed from something or other. The brown patch on the wall by the kitchen table. The unmade bed in the bedroom behind. 

He dragged his eyes from the depressing catalogue, raising them instead to meet Ruth’s unsteady gaze. That wasn’t how she saw his home, he realized suddenly. She had done family dinners here, eaten spaghetti with him and Justine. Fallen asleep on his couch, made coffee in his crappy old coffeemaker. Smiled, laughed, enjoyed herself. Enjoyed him. Feeling suddenly bold, he moved from the armchair, the safe distance, to sit beside her. He stroked her hair, pushing back the thick curl that hung in her eyes. She breathed in, and leaned into his hand, as if making a decision. She placed the wineglass down on his coffee table. The muffled sound filled his ears as he stared at her, barely daring to breathe, to move as she leaned into him. 

Her kiss was tentative, her body stiff and uncertain. He pulled her in, clutching for her, trying to put as much of himself into it, to say what he couldn’t convince her of in words. Gradually the kiss changed, deepened, as she opened herself to him. He wrapped his arms more tightly around her, and she moved, pressing her small body closer against him. God, she was so small, so light. His hands began to move, running down her side, her hips, her ass as she pushed him down on the battered old sofa. She writhed against him, her hips moving against him, his cock hard and straining against his jeans. 

His hands fisted in her sweater, that sexy, tight hot-teacher sweater – he pushed aside the thoughts, the ugly shame that rose in him as he remembered the reason for the sexy teacher look. She moaned, just a little sound but it inflamed him, and he pushed the sweater up over her head, desperate to get rid of it, throw it away, forget that pain and that shame in the hot sweetness of her. It caught a little as he dragged it off her, the tight turtleneck, and she looked a little embarrassed, her hair mussed, her cheeks pink, her arms coming up to hide the plain white bra revealed underneath. 

God, how could he find her so fucking hot, how could he want to fuck her so much, this awkward girl with no sense of sex appeal, no hint of flirtation, of the games women played with men? He pushed her hands away with a growl and raised his mouth to one breast, sucking through the thin cotton. She gasped and it almost threw him from his task. It was such a Ruth noise – that honest, almost naive shock mixed with an awkward, self-conscious theatricality. He couldn’t help a little chuckle, looking back up at her face, marvelling to see it reflecting back to him the same mix of fond exasperation. He pushed himself up to kiss her mouth, tasting the brittle softness of her, wine and tears and something just inexpressibly Ruth. She kissed him back and he felt something loosen in his chest.

Somehow they moved, bodies rearranging, clothes loosening, so that she sat straddling his lap, his shirt on the floor, his jeans opened. She moved against his dick, nothing but the thin, worn cotton of her panties – white, of course, but gratifyingly damp – between them. 

“Do you have a condom?” she asked, her mouth on his ear, her breath harsh and panting. 

“Fuck. Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He hadn’t even—this—in so long, hadn’t thought to hope. Getting old. Getting tired. Not to mention that he’d always been a bit of an asshole, perfectly happy to let the girl worry about that shit. He grasped her shoulders as the realisation sunk in, his answer showing in her face, her disappointment mirroring his. He was able to register pride at that, pride in the frustration he saw in her, even as his own frustration seemed almost to undo him. 

But then she shifted, her eyes slipping away from his. Resigned. Distant in a way she hadn’t been since she first entered his house. Reaching down into his open jeans, she put her hand on his dick, guiding it towards her in a practised motion. He registered what she was meaning to do just a fraction of a second before she could settle herself around him, felt a rush of annoyance and tenderness and that need to protect her that was so, so Ruth, so unlike anything he was used to feeling.

“Fuck.” He picked her up easily, flipping her onto her back, holding her arms down, keeping his body a fraction of an inch above hers. “Is that still what you think of me? Really?”

She stared at him, wild and trapped underneath him, that bitter edge rising again. “Fuck off, Sam. What’s your problem? Don’t you want—“ she choked the last words, anger fading. Sad and lost. God he wanted to chase that look from her face, make her hate him, make her fuck him. Just not this. 

“Jesus Christ, woman.” He tried to put all his usual offensiveness into it, worried he was failing, worried his real affection would push her away again. “Are you fucking kidding me? Of course, I want to. Can’t you tell? Feel how much I want to, go ahead, do it.” He ground his dick into her, made it as lewd and coarse as he could. Giving her the old Sam, the Sam she hated, but only a little. She shoved him, only a mild heat in the movement, and he breathed out relief. 

“Look, Ruth. Fuck. I’ll buy condoms. I’ll buy ‘em tomorrow. A whole—a whole fucking box of them, okay?” 

He watched her, stared at her. Saw the emotions flickering over her face as she digested his words. Turned them over. Fuck, had no one loved her enough, he wondered, or had she just never let herself accept it, as she was refusing to accept the way he loved her? He wanted her, wanted to bury himself in her soft heat, make her moan and scream and forget herself. Wanted to fuck her until she gave up, surrendered and believed him. Until she promised never to forget him, just as he would never, god never be able to forget her. 

“Tomorrow?” The word came out as a whisper, thin and desperate. His heart wrenched. 

He growled and kissed her, hard on the mouth. She kissed him back, desperate and clinging, her mouth and tongue working against his, desperately seeking, hunting out that sweetness and tenderness. He gave it to her, tried as hard as his sad, fifty-year waste of space and air could try to give her everything she needed. 

He moved to her neck, trailing kisses and bites downwards. Paused to enjoy the way she squirmed underneath him as he found a particularly sensitive spot at the juncture of her collarbone. Smiled against her, brushing his hands gently, reverently down her sides, then more surely as she writhed against him. He put his mouth to her breast, sucking and biting her nipple until she cried out and begged him to stop. 

He obliged, briefly, sitting up to examine her body, spread out underneath him. She was flushed, her hair pulling out of its ponytail. She was naked to the waist, the skin of her upper body so pale and delicate, except for the growing pink marks of his mouth and moustache. He winced at those, tracing one along the path from her neck to her breast, making her giggle and twitch. 

She was still wearing her skirt, and he manoeuvred around, hunting for a zipper or fastening. She lay back, letting him work and he knew a brief panic – was this too much? Too soon? But she locked her eyes with his and he knew, and yanked it off, throwing her panties unceremoniously aside at the same time. The bashful look returned to her eyes as he settled himself between her knees and enjoyed the sight of her stripped fully naked before him. 

She was carefully shaved, only a small strip of hair left on her mound. It surprised him, somehow – somehow he’d always pictured her with a big, wild bush. But then there was the show, the leotards. He smiled and stroked the strip of hair with a gentle finger, followed by a gentle kiss at its base. Ruth jerked and made a motion as if to stop him. 

“You don’t have to—” 

“Shut up”

Surprisingly, that worked, and Sam settled himself between her legs, licking her in slow, questioning strokes. Finding her clit, he began to work more surely, his confidence growing as he listened to her muffled moans. She ground her hips, pushing herself more firmly against him, and he felt a rush of warmth in his chest, briefly pausing to remark on his luck at finally having her, his Ruth, here laid out below him, soft and melting and moaning underneath him. The thought flooded his senses, and he dragged himself up along her body, grinning at her in what he knew was his soppiest smile, the one he hated but didn’t know how to stop. 

“What?” She pulled back, instantly self-conscious. “Is something—why are you smiling like that?”

He smiled some more, this time just to mess with her, before reaching up to kiss her full on the mouth. “Oh sorry. Do you—you hate it.”

“No?” 

He chuckled at the obvious lie, before renewing his leisurely journey down her body. With his mouth and finger, he worked, drawing each silken gasp of pleasure from her body. 

She came quickly, falling apart against his mouth. After, they lay together, pressed awkwardly together on the couch but unwilling to move. He stroked her body, her hair, trying to memorize every sensation, every corner of her. He smiled, laughing and shaking his head as he gazed at her, so incredibly beautiful and here, where he had never truly allowed himself to believe she would be. She smiled and burrowed herself into his chest, wrapping herself into his embrace without the self-consciousness or regret that he had been half-expecting to follow in the afterglow. Instead she giggled, a little self-consciously, true, but with real pleasure too, and lifted her hand to his face. He allowed himself to breathe and enjoy it. Probably tomorrow she would hate him or hate what they had done tonight. But for now, she was here, and she was his. For tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> Also on a re-watch I realized that they are supposed to get into his actual car rather than a taxi, like my responsible, not-living-in-the-80s brain assumed they were, so that bit is wrong but I'm too anxious to redo it.


End file.
